Based On the Book By Freida McFadden
Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, Brandon Sklenar
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Director: Paul Feig
In Irish Cinemas: 26th December 2025
Paul Feig puts his experience with glossy, twist-driven thrillers—most notably A Simple Favour and Another Simple Favour to wickedly effective use in The Housemaid. This is the kind of lurid, knowingly trashy fun powered by an absurdly attractive cast, an irresistibly pulpy premise ripped straight from the heyday of 1990s erotic thrillers, and a streak of pitch-black comedy running through it all. The result is one of the most shamelessly schlocky and hugely entertaining cinematic rides of 2025. As far as year-end releases go, it’s a hell of a way to close things out.
Adapted from Freida McFadden’s 2022 bestselling novel, The Housemaid brings Rebecca Sonnenshine’s screenplay (from The Vampire Diaries and The Boys) vividly to life under Feig’s confident direction. From the opening moments, the film signals exactly what kind of ride we’re in for. We’re introduced to Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney), who shows up for a job interview at the opulent Winchester estate, carefully disguised in respectable and harmless glasses, résumé polished, past conveniently omitted. What she doesn’t disclose is that she served time for manslaughter.
Against all odds, Millie lands the job as a live-in housemaid to Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried), a stroke of luck she desperately needs after spending months sleeping in her car following her release from prison. On her first day, she’s given a small attic room complete with a door that locks from the outside. It’s an unsettling detail that immediately signals how wrong things are going to go. And sure enough, it doesn’t take long for the household to spiral into chaos. Nina’s erratic behaviour ranges from sudden, explosive meltdowns to elaborate acts of gaslighting, including trashing the kitchen and blaming Millie for sabotaging her PTA preparations.
Seyfried clearly relishes the opportunity to go completely unhinged. Her performance as Nina is gloriously excessive, chewing the scenery with abandon, ideally suited to the film’s guilty-pleasure sensibility. Nina’s tantrums, manipulations, and psychological games quickly become the engine driving the movie forward, raising persistent questions that keep the audience hooked: Why is she targeting Millie so relentlessly? Is there a hidden connection between them, or is this all just a sadistic experiment in control and cruelty?
As the mystery deepens, the film smartly dangles potential answers without fully committing to any one explanation, at least not at first. The only seemingly decent member of the Winchester household is Nina’s charming husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), whose kindness toward Millie only worsens Nina’s paranoia. The growing sexual tension between Millie and Andrew adds another combustible element to an already volatile situation, pushing Nina closer to the edge and threatening Millie’s tenuous grip on the job she so desperately needs.
The second half delivers the promised payoff, unleashing a cascade of twists that recontextualise nearly everything that came before. Secrets spill out, motivations are exposed, and the film gleefully peels back its layers to reveal something far more twisted lurking underneath. The revelations are undeniably outrageous, bordering on the absurd, but Feig leans into the sheer audacity of it all, embracing the novel’s trashy roots rather than apologising for them. Somehow, the madness works.
While Seyfried ultimately steals the show, both Sweeney and Sklenar more than hold their own, anchoring the film’s emotional and erotic tension. The story barrels toward a blood-soaked finale where all hell truly breaks loose, complete with brutal violence and moments of outright physical torture. It’s excessive, nasty, and wildly entertaining, exactly what The Housemaid promises to be.
In the end, Feig delivers a slick, outrageous thriller that knows precisely how ridiculous it is and revels in that knowledge. It may be preposterous, but it’s also enormously fun, and sometimes, that’s more than enough.
Overall: 7/10
Movie Reviewer
